“Okay. So I run.”
Killian comes back in, carrying a large satchel. “We run, yeah, because now I’m in shit with him too.”
“Why are you doing this? I mean, aside from my mom?”
“Well, your mom is a scary bitch, Gracey is…complicated, but D? He’s a whole another playing field.”
I stand to my feet, brushing off my pants. “Okay well, what does he look like so I know?”
Killian’s eyes come to mine. “You will never know. He is only in his true form when he wants, otherwise, he will appear however he pleases.”
“Great,” I mutter, running my hand through my hair. “This isn’t going to end well.”
Just as I step forward, a loud clap of thunder shakes the tin walls. I freeze. “That wasn’t him.”
“No,” Killian shakes his head, speeding up his steps and grabbing everything he can within reaching distance. “That was from above, if it was D, It would have come from below. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, that type of shit. Come on. We gotta go.” He grabs my hand and before I can ask to where, he’s yanking me into a small garage that’s been built into the building. He throws the bags into a black muscle car and I slide into the front passenger side.
“Where exactly are we going?” I ask as soon as he fires up the engine and starts reversing out.
“We have to go to the Cave.”
He continues to drive us out onto the highway and I turn in my seat slightly to watch him. “You don’t have a plan?”
He doesn’t give me a glance, just continues to drive, shifting gears. “I don’t, because we thought it was fine, that you slipped into your life up there smoothly. I haven’t actually thought about it after that.”
“Not very reassuring.”
“Listen,” he murmurs, kicking up his speed. “There’s a high chance we won’t survive more than a week. We need to go back to your hotel, grab your shit, and then go straight to the Caves.”
I want to ask him more questions, but I already know that he won’t answer them, so I sit back and let him drive.
He pulls into the front of my hotel and we both climb out. I shut the door and am about to ask him another question when his hand comes to mine and he yanks me toward the entrance. We pass the bodies of people on the busy street, pushing through the main entrance doors and make our way straight to my room. Once inside, I collect up the sack and what clothes I purchased, shoving it all in before slinging it over my shoulder.
“Let’s go.” Within a second, we’re back out of the hotel and in the car.
“Killian, who is Grace to you?”
He shakes his head and pulls out onto the road. “You’re not ready for that yet.”
We continue to drive until my eyelids feel heavy and a yawn escapes my mouth.
My eyes pop open and I fly from my seat, a scream exploding out of my mouth. I grab onto the seatbelt that’s stopping me from going out the front windscreen.
“What?” A voice breaks through the dark fog in my brain.
“Killian?” I turn to face him, my heart pounding in my chest.
“What happened?” he asks, and it’s then I realize he has pulled to the shoulder of the road. The dark night has set outside the windows in a mystical opaque fog.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I’ve been having flashes of nightmares every now and then since being on earth. I mostly ignore them, but some I can not.”
His eyes search mine, and it’s the first time that I notice how much expression they hold. If I didn’t already know the dark depths of black that hid behind his lids, it would still pierce my chest every time he flicks his stare at me. Killian seems gentle, though. Much more gentle than I would ever expect a gatekeeper to be. “Alright. The closer we get to the Caves, the more this might intensify, but that’s only because of the history you have to that place.” He pulls back onto the highway and drops the car down gears until the angry engine shakes under my seat.
“I have history there?”
The muscle in his jaw tenses. “You do. It’s where you were born and where we opened the portal to get you through to…” He pauses, and then points. “Up there.”
“Nirvana,” I add, rolling my eyes because he can’t even say the word. Angels, per se, aren’t to say Nirvana around demons because it opens a portal for them, sending their energy directly to the golden gates. Killian isn’t a demon, though. He’s a gatekeeper.
“Yeah.” He clears his throat, grins, and continues talking. “Anyway… you were born at the Caves. Your mother shoved you through the portal shortly after.”
“How have I never heard of the Caves before?”
“It’s sacred,” he continues, briefly glancing at me out of the corner of his eye. “The Caves is a small underground town that is the entrance to a spiritual realm.”
“What—what?” I think my brain is going to explode from the overload of information.
Killian pauses and then gazes at me over my shoulder. “Wait, you do know about the parallel universe, yeah? Threa?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Jesus fuck.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Alright, so there’s a parallel universe that’s a direct mirror to this one, only in the other one, all of the countries, cities, towns, damn street names, are all spelled with jumbled words. So Earth there is called Threa and so on.”
I blink, shaking my head again. “I don’t understand why this would have been kept from me.”
Killian grinds his teeth and then floors it forward faster. I swear, just as I lean my head against the cool window, I hear a soft, “I do,” slip from his mouth.
Chapter 4
Slamming the car door closed, I brush my hair out of my face, shading the bright morning sun from my eyes. “Wow.” Sand slips from under my boots and the mountains ahead of us are a soft shaded pink, reaching to the sky. “Are we there?”
Killian lights a smoke, shutting his side of the door and grabbing his leather jacket. “Yes and no. Come on.” My eyes squint as they train on the way the leather stretches over his broad back. His steps are fluid and calculated as he heads toward the closest cave to us. They look like enlarged Himalayan rocks. They don’t seem like something that should be of this world, crafted by magic.
I fall into step beside Killian as he steers us toward a dark shadow on the front of the rocks. It looks like a cave opening, a place you can’t see beyond.
My walking slows as we reach the entry, the wind blowing through my hair. I brush it out of my face, looking at Killian. “This is it?”
He grabs my hand and laces his fingers with mine. The jolt of electricity that passes through me gets squashed down with every step. We enter the obscurity of the unknown and a cool breeze zaps over my flesh. The scent of damp cement and slime covered concrete hits my senses instantly. “Killian?” His name leaves my mouth and bounces off the walls.
“Shhhh. Almost there.”
In an instant, I see a slice of daylight fighting the hard rock, shining through the bleak air.
I squeeze his hand and use my other to shield the bright light that’s now an onslaught. With a loud bang, the light surrounds us both and slowly, as my eyes adjust, a city spreads out in front of us as the white-light slowly dissipates.
I spin around to see where we came from, only coming face-to-face with a large mountain rock.
“I left my sack in the car!”
Killian shakes his head and takes my hand. “You won’t need that here, but the car and its contents are at my house.”
I don’t argue, rather follow him down the dusted hill and toward the village.
People are shuffling through crowds, all wearing a vast range of interesting attire that ranges from robes to linen pants and shirts, to glamorous dresses. A child pulls at his robe, shading his face more and his mother grabs him by the hand, her eyes flying to Killian in a panic. It becomes blatantly clear that people are scared of Killian. The deeper we enter into the horde of people, the more they begin s
plit like the red sea. Some mothers even going as far as shading their child’s eyes.
“Oh come on. I’m not that bad am I, Angel?”
He’s talking to me. “What?” I ask, slamming into his hard back. I was too busy people watching to notice he had stopped. “Sorry.”
His hands come out to stabilize me, then his eyes drop to mine. “I said I’m not that bad—am I?”
“Your question confuses me, Killian.” I rub my head. “You said you’re not that bad, and then you ask me…”
He pauses, and then laughs, continuing to pull me through the people. He eyes them up and down, and if I am not mistaken, a hiss escapes his mouth a few times. My attention catches the tall buildings, now that the walkway has thinned and people have successfully disappeared. The aged brick climbs for a few stories, with paint chippings peeling from the stone. The pavement textures rough pebbles that feels uneven under my feet, and every now and then, there will are bright pottery pots of flowers hanging from the walls. It reminds me of Italy.
Killian takes my hand and pushes open a wooden door with cracks between the gaps. It slams shut behind me once we enter.
A woman in her late sixties descends from the stairway, a loud creak breaking through the silence. “Killian. What are you doing here?” Then her eyes fly to me and she pales. All the blood seems to drain from her face as she quickly runs down the stairs, grabbing my arm and tugging me into the kitchen. “You can’t be here. Killian!”
Killian enters the kitchen, his head bowed to his chest. His eyes flick up to mine beneath a smirk. What is his problem. “She’s fine. I need to take her to the crossover.”
The lady searches my eyes and then turns toward the small kitchen. It’s licked in pale salmon and decorated in ceramic appliances. The walls are a clean white and there are three bar stools tucked beneath the kitchen counter. She squeezes the edge of the counter and spins back around to face Killian, who has come up beside me. He wraps his hand around my upper arm and says, “Are we going to have a problem here?” The language he switches to is Aramaic, an old dead language from way back to thousands of years ago. It’s a dead language to humans, more dead than Latin, but it is a language that our people still speak every now and then.
“No, of course not. It was just unexpected as I thought this was not going to be an issue. I will get things in order and ready. Please, give me until the clock strikes eight.”
Killian nods, and then his eyes come to mine. “That will be fine. We will be back then.”
He begins to take me out of the house, walking the way we came when her words stop me in my tracks. “She has returned, but she must be careful.” Again, in Aramaic.
I turn to face her, opening my mouth to ask what it is that she means, but it’s too late and Killian is already dragging me out of the house.
He’s at least two steps ahead of me, dipping passed the few people who are strolling down the street. The sun has set of a burnt orange hue that’s glazing over the sky and the birds have started to quiet, retreating for their sleep.
“Killian, who was that woman and why did it seem like she knew who I was?”
He ignores me, ducking between the sea of bodies. His hand comes out to mine as he yanks me into him. “She knows your mother.”
I don’t believe him, and I don’t know why.
We break out to an opening of people sitting near a bonfire. The strums of a dusty guitar jams out a soft tune, and the flicks of flames lick the night air. Killian pulls me down onto the sand, I look around confused. “We were just in the town center, now we’re at the beach?”
Killian shrugs, leaning back onto one elbow to watch me. “It’s a trick I do.”
I smile. “Oh yeah? Any other tricks I should know about?”
His eyes hold mine captive, refusing to let go. “Maybe.”
A loud clap of laughter breaks our eye contact and I gaze up to the crowd surrounding the fire, dancing with their arms linked together.
“This place that we’re going to…” I add, looking back at Killian, shocked to see him still watching me. I can’t quite pin the way his stare makes me feel. Not comfortable, but warm. I clear my throat. “Ah, is it going to be safe for me?”
He continues to stare, and then the corner of his mouth kicks up in a small grin. “More than it is here—yes.”
I nod, swallowing past the swell in my throat. “Well okay then.”
I shouldn’t feel this way about someone so instantly, but I do. Maybe it’s Grace’s influence that has yanked me toward trusting Killian, or maybe it’s all part of my new human instincts, but whatever it is, it feels right.
“What is this place?” I ask, wanting to know as much as possible about this small village that I have never heard of.
“It’s the barrier between Earth and Threa.”
After we stayed and watched the locals dance, the live music play and some of the kids swim under the moonlight, it was a quarter to eight and we needed to head back to the house from earlier.
Killian knocks on the door a few times as we wait patiently for the woman to answer.
The door suddenly opens and she rushes us in with a wave of her hand. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”
Killian yanks me in, kicking the door closed behind us. We follow her through the dark hallway and into an empty room at the end of the house. She places a small glass bottle filled with purple liquid in front of a blank wall before she starts chanting in Aramaic.
“For if you let us through, I will step through the dew, and offer my sin up onto you…”
My eyes go to Killian, and I don’t know why. Maybe for reassurance? I wasn’t sure and didn’t have enough time to really search myself for that answer, because with the next blink, a black spiral opens up onto the wall and Killian’s hand comes to mine, pulling me through the dark vortex.
Bright light slaughters my vision as I hit the ground. Dust flies up around me and I cough uncontrollably, rolling onto my side. Pushing up with my hand, I rub the dirt from my face. “Killian?”
Killian groans from the other side of me and I turn to face him. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” He pushes himself up. “Fucking hate those things.”
I get to my feet, brushing the dirt off my pants. “You do that often?”
His eyes come to mine. “No. Which is why I hate it so much.”
I take this moment to look around, my eyes squinting against the harsh sun. “We’re near the Grand Canyon.”
“Indeed.” Killian pulls out a packet of smokes and bites one into his mouth. He lights it, blowing out the smoke. “I didn’t tell you, but this world is exactly like the human world, only things live here, manifest here, in a way that cannot be done on earth.”
I look around the desert. “Well if it means I’m safe.”
“Er. I said safer, not safe.”
“Er,” I correct. He starts trekking through the sand, so I jog to catch up. “Safer,” I repeat through a whisper. “So, do you know where we’re going now? What’s happening?”
He continues walking until we both hit the asphalt. “I just need to get you to my condo. We can go from there.” I realize how much he has put on the line for me. I don’t know what his life was before I walked in on it, but whatever it was, I’ve interrupted it.
“I’m sorry, Killian.” My guilt takes hold of my mouth. “For taking you out of your life and putting you on babysitting duty. You can leave, I’m sure I can figure something out.”
Killian cranks his head over his shoulder slightly. “Don’t be sorry. Trust me.”
The sad part is is that I think I am starting to trust him. I don’t know if I’m being naïve, or if I’m being human? But I feel myself slowly trusting Killian. It’s hard not to trust a man who uproots his entire life and snaps into action at the risk of your safety, and besides, Grace wouldn’t put me onto him if I wasn’t supposed to trust him.
We continue on, and when Killian tosses his smoke onto the ground and steps on
it with his heavy boot, his hand comes to mine. He licks his lip, flashing me a smile that has his dimples sinking into his cheeks. “Ready, princess?”
I nod nervously. “Sure.”
In an instant, I’m standing in the middle of a living room. The walls and décor are dark, the fireplace setting off red hues against my skin. There’s a soft melody playing through the speakers, classical, I think. I feel dirty in my clothes, being in this pristine clean mansion. The walls are all tinted glass, looking out over a beach and when I duck around to get a view of the kitchen that hangs adjacently off the sitting room, Killian is in there, rummaging through the fridge. My eyes go back out to the ocean, waves crashing against the sand. When I squint my eyes, I notice a few soft neon blue bubbles floating in the water, it’s like calm is floating within the chaos. “Wha—?”
“Mermaids,” Killian says, and I jump in shock from his proximity, turning to face him. He hands me a glass of milk. I take it tentatively, my fingers twitching over the condensation of the glass. “Thank you.” I take a small sip. “Mermaids? That’s…strange.”
“Mermaids are not the most outlandish things you’re going to see in this realm, Tatyana, and while we’re on this subject, stay away from them. No Ariels in that water, just Ursalas.”
“What?” I cough, patting my chest when I swallow down the wrong pipe. Ariel and Ursala?
He seems to realize what he has said doesn’t register with me, because he shakes his head. “How sheltered are you all up there? Shiet, times have changed,” he murmurs under his breath, so low that I almost miss it. “Just don’t talk to them. They always have an ulterior motive.”
I clear my throat, wiping the excess milk off the top of my lip. His eyes follow the movement and my heart thunders in my chest. It tightens when he leans forward and swipes the rest off with his finger, and then when he pushes his thumb to his lips and sucks it off, my legs tremble and my cheeks flare. What is this I’m feeling. Attraction?
“Killian, I—”
Such Violent Delights: A Holiday Paranormal Romance Anthology Page 29